It was New Year's Eve. His parents and 19-year-old sister were driving to a party in Pennsylvania, but Ado declined, saying he would watch the ball drop at home on TV. He finished his text with "Happy New Year" and "I love you, too, Dad."

When the family returned to its Burlington Township home about 11:30 p.m., he joked with his father that "tomorrow is the Ducks' day," and headed to his room.

But at game time in the late afternoon, there was no sign of Ado, and no answer when Adam Halkic knocked on his bedroom door. Pushing the door open, he found his son lifeless.

Emergency crews raced to the home, only to discover that the outgoing, handsome varsity linebacker and "A" student at Burlington Township High School had committed suicide.

Four days later, one of his best friends at school, senior Mike Steve, 17, would take his own life, just hours after urging schoolmates at a memorial service to "stay strong for Ado" and not despair. The deaths stunned the high school community, which turned out en masse for the funerals, and devastated the boys' families.

"He showed no signs of depression," Halkic, 43, said as he sat with arms folded at a martial arts school in Edgewater Park, where Ado had trained since age 7 and befriended Steve.

"I have tried to put myself in his position, to see what he might have been hiding," he said in the accents of his native Bosnia and Herzegovina as he gazed at the floor. "I ask myself, 'What did we miss?' I question myself every day. I don't have any kind of clue. I may never know."

"My wife Zerena is devastated. I cannot describe," he said, briefly leaning nearly to his knees to convey the depth of her sadness. "That's her baby boy."

Halkic said he remains so shocked that he has not yet wept.

"I am incredibly sorry. I miss my son dearly. I would like to cry right here," he said. "But I can't."

He and his family fled from Bosnia to New Jersey in 1997, two years after the end of the ethnic cleansing that left more than 100,000 of their fellow Muslims dead. "I do not wish to talk about that," he said.

There have been rumors, he said, that Ado, a freshman, was distraught after a breakup with a girlfriend, but Halkic said he thought that explanation unlikely. "I didn't even know he was dating," he said. "He was 15."

Steve's family declined an invitation to talk about their son for this article.

Halkic, who has worked for Burlington Township's water department for the last 12 years, said he wants the world to know Ado, who had seemed to him "kind of perfect."

"He was an excellent student," he said. "His freshman year, he made the varsity team on football - only the second time anyone did that in 20 years" at Burlington Township High.

Schoolmates have also been regaling the family with tales of Ado's stances against bullies, about which they knew nothing, and his many acts of kindness.

"Girls have been telling us how he would hold the door for them - what a gentleman he was," Halkic said, shaking his head in wonder.

A boy on the basketball team told them that when Ado learned the boy could not afford good sneakers, he gave him his favorite pair. "Now he comes by our house almost every day," the father said.

Ado would also ask his mother to bring two turkey wraps each day to his football camp, Halkic recalled. At first she thought he had a ferocious appetite, only to discover he was sharing them with teammates who could not afford lunches.

"It's for kids who don't have food," he explained. "So when I eat, I share."

The high school's vice principal has told the parents that Ado once helped him break up a fistfight in the halls - pinning one of the combatants against a wall. And two girls have told them how he sprang to their aid as they were being harassed at a fast-food restaurant.

At the memory of this, Halkic's solemn face broke into a smile.

"Some boys were teasing the girls about their figures, and they didn't like it," he said. Ado approached, "picked up a milkshake, poured it over this one boy's head, and told them to leave."

He laughed. "I never knew how much good he did."

"He touched a lot of people," said Brian McPherson, founder and teaching master at the JBM Brazilian Jiu Jitsu center, where Halkic reminisced about his son.

It was here that McPherson, the Halkics, and the Steves held a gathering Jan. 6 for area youths distressed by their students' deaths. "We got dozens," McPherson recalled.

"I was stunned at how many came out," Halkic said.

When they asked the young people how many had ever considered suicide, "about 30 put their hands up," said McPherson, a retired state trooper and now a captain with the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey police.

"Then we asked how many had tried it, and about half the hands stayed up."

Halkic said his wife was so upset by the numbers that she sagged in her chair.

As a result, McPherson said, he has begun the paperwork to create a nonprofit drop-in center at his martial arts center, to be called Our Kids Matter, where any young person who feels depressed or suicidal can hang out.

"If they can't talk to their parents or teachers or counselors, they can come here," he said. "I'm already receiving calls. I don't know how they got my cellphone number, but it's OK."

The Burlington Township School District last week offered grief counseling for all members of the school community distressed by the boys' suicides.

Muscular and compactly built, and called "Professor" by his martial arts students, McPherson said that he had watched both Adnan Halkic and Mike Steve grow from small boys to young men and that "their deaths are very important to me."

"We have to start educating, and keep educating, kids and adults" about suicide prevention, he said. "And if the drop-in center goes the way we think it will, we may have to hire staff."

Adam Halkic nodded. "I've got a stack of checks and cash people have sent us," he said. "I'm going to use it to buy pizza for the kids the next time they come here."

Asked what young people should know about how suicide wounds a family, he replied: "You get up every morning, and it's like your left hand is missing.

"Breakfast is not breakfast. Lunch is not lunch. Dinner is not dinner. Before, there were four of us. Now there's three. It's not the same.

"I will visit my son's grave every week," he said. "I will sit with him and talk. That's all I can say."

And to young people contemplating suicide, he said: "I would tell them, we love them all. If you come to talk to us, we will help.